A new analysis shows how inconsistency in data sets allowed the Cuomo administration in New York to undercount nursing home deaths from COVID-19 by 68 percent.
In a bombshell revelation, an aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told fellow Democrats on February 11 that the coverup was to prevent former President Donald Trump from using the true death toll as political ammunition. On January 28, New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report stating COVID-19 fatalities in the Empire State were 56 percent higher than what the Cuomo Administration said they were. Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating the alleged cover-up.
An analysis released March 12 by FREOPP finds the undercounting to be as high as 68 percent, more than 10 percent higher than James’ claim. The report details how inconsistencies in data reporting allowed that undercount to happen.
Throughout last summer, Cuomo asserted that New York had one of the best records protecting nursing home residents. The FREOPP analysis found New York having the sixth-worst performance in the nation, with 12.4 percent of nursing home residents dying from the virus.
History of the Scandal
On March 25, 2020, Cuomo issued an underlined directive prohibiting nursing home operators from turning away people on the sole basis of a COVID diagnosis. The directive would especially impact nursing homes with a transitory population that often houses residents who are recovering from hospitalization. Additionally, the directive banned nursing homes from testing new or current residents deemed “medically stable” for COVID-19.
The Cuomo administration defended the no-testing policy on the grounds that, in their assessment, 98 percent of nursing homes already had residents or staff with COVID. However, this was a critical mistake, says Gregg Girvan, a senior fellow at FREOPP and author of the report.
“It adds another vector into that facility and makes it harder to implement proper infection control,” Girvan said on The Heartland Daily Podcast on April 12.
Cuomo rescinded the order on May 10.
“But this time, there were thousands of residents who were readmitted,” Girvan said.
Making matters worse, the administration began blaming nursing home staff members for exposing residents to the virus.
“That may be true, but they defended the six-week policy they knew was incomplete,” Girvan said.
It is impossible to know if the administration would have ended the order sooner than six weeks and possibly protected more people if it had taken a more honest look at the data.
Funny Numbers
FREOPP researchers noticed something odd about New York’s nursing home death numbers when they began looking at nursing home deaths as far back as last spring. New York reported 5,003 COVID deaths, or 5.2 percent of the entire long-term care population, which was far lower than the surrounding states. Also, the deaths as a percentage of all COVID deaths in the state were “abnormally low” at 20 percent, when neighboring states reported rates exceeding 50 percent.
FREOPP was able to get to the bottom of the discrepancy after merging the state’s numbers with new data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Starting May 8, 2020, CMS required all licensed nursing homes throughout the country to report data related to COVID.
The two data sets allowed FREOPP to look at cumulative deaths at particular facilities.
“For each nursing home where CMS reported a high number of deaths, the most likely reason was that the nursing home was reporting hospitals deaths as well as on-site deaths to CMS, while New York state was only reporting on-site deaths,” the report stated.
Needed: Accurate Data
Girvan says to truly measure how well a state-protected its nursing home residents, it is important to look at deaths as a percentage of residents in long-term facilities rather than a percent of all COVID deaths in a particular state.
“This was really a great example of how New York made this statistical maneuver in order to present itself as doing better in protecting nursing home residents than they really were, and this point does not get enough attention,” Girvan said.
In his report, Girvan writes, “New York’s politicization of nursing home data serves as a cautionary tale. Reliable data is essential for state and local officials to make good decisions on containment measures, vaccine distribution, and business and school re-openings. It is not yet possible to estimate how many people died because the state concealed how serious the pandemic was in long-term care facilities. But the number is well above zero.”
AnneMarie Schieber (amschieber@heartland.org) is the managing editor of Health Care News.
Internet info:
Gregg Girvan, “The True COVID Death Toll in New York State Long-Term Facilities,” March 12, 2021, FREOPP: https://freopp.org/the-true-covid-death-toll-in-new-york-state-long-term-care-facilities-bb425848d561
How the Cuomo Administration Hid Nursing Home Deaths, The Heartland Daily Podcast, April 12, 2021: https://www.heartland.org/multimedia/podcasts/how-the-cuomo-administration-hid-nursing-home-deaths-from-covid-guest-gregg-girvan
